


brace your fist against your honor

by wanderNavi



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Discrimination, exploring an idea, this is equivalent to a half-eaten snack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:07:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28758564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderNavi/pseuds/wanderNavi
Summary: When Chua had been young, he watched the ministers comb through his town for every young bender emerging into their flame, so as to stamp the household with the military’s promise that it would be back in five years’ time to take the children away for training.If you are not a firebender, by the laws of the Agni Kai you cannot defend your honor.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	brace your fist against your honor

**Author's Note:**

> I got about halfway through writing this, then lost interest in finishing the train of thought.

When Chua had been young, he watched the ministers comb through his town for every young bender emerging into their flame, so as to stamp the household with the military’s promise that it would be back in five years’ time to take the children away for training.

No one spoke of the cave two hours’ walk away where Zhen hid his sister every year until she wasn’t hidden anymore, nor of the blood that stained the dirt, dripping from his back. The children came back every year at new year’s holiday until they didn’t anymore and instead the parents, the siblings, the children would stand at the doorway, cradling the tags dropped into their limply cupped hands.

But at least the benders could climb the ranks and earn an income that paid for their family’s yearly rice rations – that was more than Chua could speak for, crushed against the limits of his progression.

After all, how could a troop fight with honor if their commander couldn’t fight for their honor in the flames of an Agni Kai? It hadn’t mattered that the Yuyan could split bamboo reeds into splinters with only their arrows or that the pikemen of Shaokura could eliminate their enemies even when surrounded five to one.

No bending, no Agni Kai, no officer commission. The closest Chua ever came to amounting as something more than a sergeant had been dragging his comrades out of a death trap that killed all the officers and nearly all the men too. And even then, the general at camp flicked a single glance at Chua’s blood-soaked uniform and broken fingers and dismissed him just as easily as a lion dismissed a mouse.

**Author's Note:**

> And then I got bored ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
